Yesterday I had a chance to visit the Café de Flore and Les Deux
Magots in Paris. Prior to my visit, I was enthusiastic about seeing these two Cafés, mostly because of their fame for being a rendezvous for many French intellectuals.
But having seen them from outside, I came to disdain them and even did not
bother having a coffee inside. Passing by the Café de Flore, I had my eyes on its well-off
clients sitting on its small chairs and mingling with their friends in their branded à
la mode clothes and luxury accessories while a beggar who could hardly walk
was passing by. It took quite a while for the handicapped beggar to pass by the
Café. The guys sitting in the sidewalk café were looking quite apathetically at
him while sipping their coffee and smoking their cigarettes. At that moment, I started soliloquizing
that perhaps they are now debating about equality and fraternity as their forefathers passionately did while closing their indifferent eyes to the miserable beggars and passersby
of the nineteenth and twentieth century Paris.
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